One reason Yahoo shareholders won’t hand their company to Carl Icahn, according to the rather hopeful analysis of one person close to the current management team, is that he would be in “a horrible negotiating position” when it came to trying to sell the company. He has no plan other than to deliver Yahoo to Microsoft on a plate. Jerry Yang at least has an substitute strategy and a management team in place (though investors have tiny confidence in either.)
True enough. But there are still three and a half weeks to go to the Yahoo shareholder meeting, and that’s plenty of time for a public negotiation over price.
Bill Miller of Legg Mason, Yahoo’s third biggest shareholder, tried to set the ball rolling today. In a one-liner to Reuters at the Sun Valley conference (see note below) he tried to set a price bar for any deal:
The difficulty with Icahn is he’d have more shareholder support if he would state he wouldn’t sell the company for less than $33.
Of course, even if Icahn promises not to sell on the cheap, the real question is still whether Microsoft is seriously interested in an acquisition, and if so at what price. It will have to show more of its hand if Icahn is to prevail.
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